I am no longer adviser to Loyola’s Student Press. So now I can tell you the truth about The Maroon and the Wolf and what really goes on there.

Flash back to the summer of 2005: After more than 30 years in journalism, and 13 years teaching it, I had become disenchanted with the profession. Too many corporate owners, too little independence. Too much spin, too little truth. That hasn’t changed, I’m afraid. As I write this, the Los Angeles Times is in a battle against its Tribune ownership, which seems devoted more to its investors than its readers.

But The Times-Picayune’s reaction to Katrina restored my hope. You know what happened: As they were being rescued from the rising waters in newspaper delivery trucks, a dozen reporters and editors – two of them former Maroon editors – stormed back into the drowning city to cover the story. Because it was their story.

And for that, they won two Pulitzer Prizes.

To borrow a phrase from the Marines – all we need are a few good journalists.

And now, The Maroon is coming into its own.

It has been nominated for the Pacemaker, college journalism’s version of the Pulitzer, for its staff’s work during Loyola’s first semester after Katrina.

Of course, The Maroon staff did not wade back into the city after Katrina – Loyola wouldn’t allow that. But the editors did maintain a Maroon blog. And in January, the whole staff came back. Although two of them had lost their family homes, they all plunged into the coverage of post-Katrina Loyola; calming fears of contagion after a popular student died of meningitis; interviewing students scrambling for dorm rooms; recounting the storm stories of faculty members and fellow students. It was not an easy task, especially there at the end, when the university underwent its dramatic downsizing. The Maroon reacted, but did not over-react, to that controversy, and the staff members can be proud of that.

“Gone with the Wind” was the main headline of last year’s final edition. They can be proud of that too.

Of course, it’s not easy to cram newspaper work in between classes and assignments and romance and everything else you do at college. But when you do, life is anything but boring. It would make a terrific sitcom. I thought of that last spring when I spotted a Maroon reporter hiding in a bush with a camera, to get a picture of the bomb squad dealing a suspicious package that had arrived at Temple Sinai next door. It turned out to be a box of magazines. There would be no end of scripts, from the dramatic – the university president resigning in 2002 – to the vulgar – the man caught behaving indecently in the library, giving the students the opportunity to use the word “masturbating” in a headline.

And the adventures went on after Katrina.

No one was in place to produce the yearbook last year. So several Maroon editors volunteered to do that job too. Now, in ordinary times, work on a yearbook starts in August or September if not before. They started in January. And they had the book out by graduation. I believe Loyola is the only university in New Orleans that has a yearbook to memorialize that incredible year.

And now the award nomination. The Maroon has always been good at winning awards; the office walls are covered with certificates and plaques. It has won the Pacemaker three times already.

But this year it feels especially good. It will look nice on their resumes. If I were a hiring editor, I would look twice at these young people as they come out of college.

All we need are a few good journalists.

Liz Scott Monaghan now teaches part time in the School of Mass Communication. She is also a contributing editor for New Orleans Magazine.